Rodrigo Neto

Rádio Vanguarda and Vale do Aço

March 8, 2013, in Ipatinga, Brazil

Two unidentified men
on a motorcycle shot Neto as he was getting into his car after attending a
local barbecue in Ipatinga, in the southeastern state of Minas
Gerais, according to news reports. The journalist died at a local hospital.

Neto was the host of
the show "Plantão Policial" (Police Shift) on Rádio Vanguarda in Ipatinga and
had started working the week before as a reporter at the daily Vale do
Aço. He was also a press aide for the local mayor, according to Fernando
Benedito Jr., a journalist in Ipatinga and a friend of Neto.

Benedito told CPJ that
Neto, who had once wanted to be a police officer, had aggressively covered
police corruption throughout his career. He said Neto had frequently received
threats, especially for his coverage of cases in which police officers were
suspected of being involved in local murders. Durval Ângelo, a state
congressman and president of the state assembly's human rights commission, said that
Neto had been working on a book about one of these cases at the time of his
death that he planned to title "The Perfect Crime," Vale do Açoreported.

News accounts reported local authorities as saying that they
would be primarily looking into his journalistic work as the possible motive. In
the days after the murder, law enforcement officers said Neto had twice
reported being threatened to the authorities, most recently in February 2012, according to news reports.

Journalists in
Ipatinga told CPJ that the local press corps had formed the "Rodrigo Neto
Committee" to investigate the murder and keep pressure on authorities to solve
the case.